“It’s an incredible honour for me to be welcomed at Maison Valentino. I feel the immense joy and the huge responsibility to join a Maison de Couture that has the word ‘beauty’ carved on a collective story, made of distinctive elegance, refinement and extreme grace,” Michele said in the press release. “Today, I search for words to nominate the joy, to regard it, to really convey what I feel: the smiles that kick from the chest, the bliss of gratitude that lights up the eyes, that precious moment when necessity and beauty reach out and meet. Joy, though, is such a living thing that I’m afraid to hurt it if I dare to speak its name.”
Designers — or more accurately, their CEOs — are often playing musical chairs, but the shuffling of three high profile designers in less than two weeks is whiplash-inducing.
At the same time, the way consumers acquire and learn about their goods is in major flux. Earlier this month, the British luxury e-commerce site Matchesfashion entered administration (the British equivalent of bankruptcy), and late last year, London-based Farfetch narrowly avoided a similar fate. Net-a-Porter, once heralded as the future of shopping, is actively seeking a buyer after a deal between its parent company, Richemont, and Farfetch fell apart last year.
In the meantime, Condé Nast, which publishes fashion mainstays including Vogue, GQ and Vanity Fair, has been lurching through a round of layoffs, while i-D, considered the original indie bible of fashion, laid off much of its staff this week as new owner Karlie Kloss oversees a reinvention.
We are either in the midst of a monumental fashion shake-up — or rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Julie Gilhart, the longtime fashion director at Barneys New York who works with emerging fashion talents at the Tomorrow Group, says that fashion always reflects dissatisfactions in the larger world. “The world seems so chaotic and no one has answers. We have so much technology that we’re not really good at managing it, or knowing where it’s going,” she continues. “But it doesn’t address our souls. There are a lot of people who are just not satisfied, so you have to mix it up, you have to change it, you have to do things differently.”
The Michele appointment is a case in point of how differently one piece of news might read. Many of the recent appointments have been homogenous choices; variations on a meme have circulated over the past half year emphasizing that many of the names who have joined brands like Alexander McQueen, Moschino and Gucci have been White men with brown hair. Responses to new faces outside the mold, like Chloé’s Chemena Kamali and Michele (who is a White man, and already a tested talent, although — he has long hair!), have shown just how hungry fashion observers are for change.
Michele represents the potential for aesthetic revolt, even if he doesn’t represent new blood, per se. “Alessandro’s dynamic and disruptive view of both the archive and the moment have been sorely missed these last few seasons,” Jeremy O. Harris, the playwright, actor and producer who regularly wore Michele’s Gucci, says. “Pierpaolo, one of the great innovators, could only be succeeded by someone as innovative as Ale. This is such a great day for people who love fashion.”
Actress Hari Nef, another Michele acolyte and close observer of fashion’s comings and goings, said that Michele’s return signals a move away from the laser focus quiet luxury. “Over the last few years, fashion has assumed a conservative pose: simultaneously self-effacing and grand. The condition at the center of ‘quiet luxury’ is ‘Look at me! Don’t look at me!’” she says. “Alessandro’s Gucci was too deeply considered to emerge as a hindsight foil to this ‘quiet’ wave, but there was an exuberance to it, a voraciousness and a gusto for being seen. Is that not what fashion is all about?”
The new role offers a more moderate challenge for Michele (though he will be making couture for the first time, the dream of practically every designer). Gucci, with revenue of about 10 billion euros, is the heavyweight in Kering’s portfolio, whereas Valentino reported more modest revenue of 1.42 billion euros in 2022. Under Piccioli, Valentino was known for its clean, jet set sportswear and for making couture relevant far beyond its tiny customer base, plus much-discussed celebrity ensembles like Florence Pugh in nipple-baring gowns. Michele may feel more pressure to move products, though he proved himself an accessories superstar at Gucci with his fur-lined slides and retro bags, and practically wrote the playbook for eccentric celebrity partnerships.
Kering may also be acknowledging that the world needs a bit more variety. In 2023, Kering acquired a 30 percent stake in Valentino, which was previously fully owned by the Qatari-based investment firm Mayhoola. That deal included an option for Kering to outright acquire Valentino by 2028. The wrench, or something like it: Kering also owns Gucci, which means that Michele is returning to the same company that, reportedly, chewed him up and spit him out.
Kering’s chair and CEO, François-Henri Pinault, said in a statement: “I am very happy that Alessandro has been appointed at the creative helm of Valentino and I am certain that with his creativity, culture and versatile talent, he will be able to interpret masterfully the unique heritage of this magnificent house and make it flourish. I can’t wait to see his passion, imagination and dedication at play in this new chapter for Valentino.”
Either the bad blood is over for the sake of increased profits (Women’s Wear Daily reported last week that Michele’s noncompete agreement with Gucci was said to expire this month), or Michele’s appeal is simply irresistible. Still, Kering is in financial hot water: This month, it reported its overall sales were down about 10 percent in the first quarter, with sales at its marquee brand Gucci, where a new designer, Sabato de Sarno, and its corporate team are attempting a major upscale turnaround, are down 20 percent.
The first collection from de Sarno only arrived in stores in February, Kering noted, but the perception is not good; its stock dropped 14 percent following the news. Michele could provide the new energy that Kering needs: His debut show, in Paris in the fall, is already the most anticipated of the season, at least according to Vogue’s announcement.
Phoebe Philo’s label, independently operated with a minority investment, continues on its own sui generis path: no fashion shows, no big ad campaigns in glossy magazines. Just a straightforward product with beautiful imagery, shown on women who may be unfamiliar — especially because many have decades on the average runway model — but are utterly unique.
Then there’s the possibility of Van Noten’s heir. Van Noten, who does everything with crisp humanity, is likely to take his time naming his successor, and will pick a trusted talent rather than a splashy name — Meryll Rogge, who once worked with Van Noten before founding her own label, as well as a print maven like Hillary Taymour, of Collina Strada, or a color savant like Christopher John Rogers, all seem like strong possibilities. Any of them would represent a changing of the guard and would bring a new jolt of much-needed youth to the staid halls of Paris design.
At LVMH, the top job at Givenchy remains open since Matthew Williams announced his departure late last year. It is also likely that Michael Burke, who earlier this year was appointed CEO of LVMH Fashion Group, may make or encourage greater change at brands under his stable, which includes Givenchy, Dior, Louis Vuitton and Loewe. Burke was previously CEO at Louis Vuitton, and was instrumental in bringing the late (and very boundary-pushing) Virgil Abloh to the label.
Fashion people, though, have a tendency to blow things out of proportion. What is mildly interesting so often becomes fascinating; what is mediocre is described as terrible. So what’s really going on here?
“The shift is upon us,” admits Nikki Ogunnaike, the editor of Marie Claire. Still, “Sometimes I wonder if we’re grasping! Valentino could have gone to a woman.” We should really think of all this change as “a baby step of disruption,” she says.
After all, the e-commerce news is not good. And even though a handful of retailers remain — independent boutiques that offer smaller and alternative labels, like Washington’s Relish, are thriving, as is Munich-based e-tailer Mytheresa — most clothes are so outrageously expensive that the whole enterprise feels increasingly irrelevant.
And Michele’s comeback may end up having more in common with Riccardo Tisci’s unstimulating tenure to Burberry after several rousing years at Givenchy (or Daniel Lee’s move to the brand just a year after he left Bottega Veneta under mysterious circumstances). Is it what fashion needs to pull itself out of this staid luxurious rut, or another example of the same few names getting the plum jobs?
Gilhart says that what keeps her optimistic is the amount of young designers “who are trying to create something more responsible, more sustainable or more ethical.”
Michele, for his part, seems to believe that this is a major new beginning, at least according to his poetic statement: “May my bow, wide open arms, speak for itself and salute in this early spring the regeneration of life and the promise of new blooming.”
Plus ça change, perhaps.
